


Neal-in-a-box

by qwanderer



Series: brickverse [4]
Category: White Collar
Genre: Gen, Grief/Mourning, POV Peter Burke, Series Finale Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-11
Updated: 2016-03-11
Packaged: 2018-05-26 03:43:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,389
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6222301
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/qwanderer/pseuds/qwanderer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Peter wasn't sure if he deserved to see everything that was Neal, but part of him knew that if he opened the grey metal door, that's what he'd get.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Neal-in-a-box

**Author's Note:**

> I was going to get right to the next part in the longer saga but I realized I needed a little ficlet to cover the finale from Peter's perspective, to explain some things.

Peter was having a little trouble letting go of Neal, the man himself, but he found himself surprisingly sanguine about that chapter in his life being over. A new one had begun, and little Neal deserved the attention he would have spent on his work, and his mischievous partner. 

He ran into Mozzie on the street one day, and it was odd talking to him, as always, but there was something different about this time. The layers of obscurity the man usually wore were there, of course, but they seemed perilously thin, tenuous and vibrating with emotion. 

Which made sense, since they were talking about grieving Neal, but Peter thought there was probably something more. 

Peter talked about seeing Neal out of the corner of his eye, in the flash of reflection on his office window. Mozzie told him about all the signs he'd seen, all the little hints that Neal had had a plan. How sure he'd been that Neal was still out there somewhere. 

"It must have been a con." 

Everything had secret meaning for Mozzie, but he sounded so _sure._

Or at least, as if he _had_ been. 

He professed not to be in denial anymore. Not to be thinking up conspiracy theories. And he seemed genuine enough about that. 

Peter stold him to stop by, see the kid. Said, "See you, Haversham." 

"Winters. Teddy Winters." 

Peter raised his eyebrows, but said nothing. 

If Mozzie really was Teddy Winters, he'd gone to an awful lot of trouble to hide it, only to admit it now. 

But now... when the loss of Neal stood between them... it seemed mean-spirited to do anything about the revelation. 

Peter decided to let it lie. 

(He'd have to keep looking for the $23 million, though.) 

* * *

When he got home, there was a mysterious wooden box on his doorstep. 

And a Mozzie in his dining room. 

Moz didn't say anything about the wooden box under his arm. That didn't mean the box wasn't from him, or by way of him, but it did mean that he didn't want its appearance to be connected with his own. So Peter let him leave before opening it. 

It was a very nice bottle of Bordeaux. 

El immediately accepted it as the gift it was, but to Peter, it felt like something else. 

It felt like a nudge. 

It wasn't a tease. A green lollipop would have been a tease. It would have meant, "You can't find me anymore." But the empty anklet collected from the morgue had said that eloquently enough. 

But a Bordeaux bottle.... 

It meant goodbye, and not goodbye. It meant "I'm not lost yet. Keep looking." 

The fact that it was full of good wine, that meant... something. Promises kept. A future that had good things in it. 

Maybe it meant, "You've spent enough time chasing me. Sit, have a drink with your wife, enjoy the things your life has become." 

He took that advice first. 

But then he looked again. There'd been something more to the bottle, the first time. Something seemingly obvious, something Neal had almost missed. Neal had told him the story, that night as they sat in the shipping container, keeping company with the painting that was everything left of Kate. 

The shipping container. He'd never chased down that lead. Never gotten a warrant to cut the locks off the locked containers in the lot. 

The key. There were a lot of things in Neal's pockets... at the end. All of them had some reason behind them, some possible use. But he'd never known what the key went to. 

And he'd never thought to put them together. 

* * *

He waited until the next morning to go and look. He still took the surface part of the message to heart. The wine was meant to be drunk, the night to be enjoyed. 

Peter knew enough to know that what he was about to do was important. Relevant, in some way. He thought it through as he drove to where the shipping containers sat in their rows. 

It all echoed the messages Kate had left Neal. 

The bottle, the Bordeaux that stood as a clue to where to find her message, the shipping container, the one where Peter had gone with Neal to see Kate's last goodbye. The painting. Her story. Her whole self, Neal had said. Everything. 

This had to be the same. 

Peter wasn't sure if he deserved to see everything that was Neal, but part of him knew that if he opened the grey metal door, that's what he'd get. 

But someone had wanted him to find it. _Neal_ had wanted him to find it. 

He swung the door open and let the morning light stream into the darkness. 

Here he was. 

Paintings in gilded frames, apparent masterworks. Crates and crates of... probably more paintings. Antique furniture. Books, papers, bottles of champagne, art supplies, paints and brushes and pens everywhere. Sketches of the New York cityscape on the wall. A bulletin board full of clippings, notes, pictures. Stage makeup. 

That damn mannequin. Still in the suit and tie. 

...With a bullet hole in its chest. 

Bullets the size of the gun Neal had been shot with, the one Keller had been carrying. Casings. Gunpowder, as if some rounds had been tampered with, emptied out. An unsharpened pencil, its end flat. 

Sketches of the structure of the human heart. Books about Asian medicinal plants. Articles on blowfish toxin. 

Pictures of the paramedic that had treated Neal. He recognized her now from the surveillance photos of this place. 

A newspaper indicating a possible next heist. 

It was all a con. 

This was Neal, all right. This was Neal Caffrey all over. 

...And he guessed that that was the whole idea of the container, to give him that feeling, that one, right there. _What wild, impossible thing has Caffrey done now?_

The rush of that feeling was incredible. That Neal Caffrey was still out there, that he was still doing what he did best, that Peter Burke could be on his trail again. 

...But that was too easy. Too perfect. Too pat. The Bordeaux had had two meanings, and the first acknowledged that Peter had a good life here, one worth savoring. 

In the last months he'd known the man, he had started to see more under the veneer, and this? This was all shine. All Neal Caffrey, the con man. 

Neal Caffrey was all in this box. He wasn't out there, robbing the Louvre. He was here, in the hands of Peter Burke, like the key. 

This whole container, its contents, was built like a case file. A chain of evidence. A collection of leads. One man, one case. 

Well, he had stacks of case files on the man who called himself Neal Caffrey, on his aliases. Each one a work of art. Like whatever was in all these crates, piled high against the walls. 

There was a message here. 

This wasn't all the man was. Peter could suddenly imagine dozens of containers, enough to fill a cargo ship. Each one full of the evidence of a different personality, a different life. Full and alive and crowded with things and people and memories. 

This was where Neal Caffrey ended... and someone else began. 

Neal Caffrey was here... and someone else was out there, alive, living a life that wasn't quite the life of the Neal Caffrey that Peter had come to know. 

But maybe, just maybe, he was just as real. 

* * *

He was alive. 

...Whoever he was. 

Mozzie had known - when they'd spoken on the street. He'd known then. That's why he'd given Peter the name Teddy Winters. The only reason he would've given away that secret was to send another message. 

Maybe he should have heard it more like this: 

_I trust you with the knowledge that no one else can know. That I am alive. Everyone else needs to believe I'm dead. And so did you, for a while, because you couldn't have just let it slide._

_But the man whose body you found... or thought you found... isn't dead._

Peter wasn't going to go chasing Teddy Winters. He'd already decided to leave that where it lay, buried. 

He'd certainly extend the same favor to Neal Caffrey. 

And wish the man well, wherever... and whoever... he was now.


End file.
